Carl Safina Quotes

• I am drawn to the wild not because it is wild but because it is sensible, logical, ordered, stable, resilient. Wild nature is everything we're struggling to regain.

  Carl Safina

  Nature, Struggle, Logical

  51 Copy quote

• The compass of compassion asks not what is good for me? but what is good? Not what is best for me but what is best. Not what is right for me but what is right. Not how much can we take? but How much ought we leave? and how much might we give? Not what is easy but what is worthy. Not what is practical but what is moral.

  Carl Safina

  Compassion, Giving, Might

  Carl Safina (2011). “The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World”, p.407, Henry Holt and Company

  21 Copy quote

• Saving the world requires saving democracy. That requires well-informed citizens. Conservation, environment, poverty, community, education, family, health, economy- these combine to make one quest: liberty and justice for all. Whether one's special emphasis is global warming or child welfare, the cause is the same cause. And justice comes from the same place being human comes from: compassion.

  Carl Safina

  Children, Compassion, Justice For All

  Carl Safina (2011). “The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World”, p.116, Macmillan

  21 Copy quote

• The coast is an edgy place. Living on the coast presents certain stark realities and a wild, rare beauty. Continent confronts ocean. Weather intensifies. It's a place of tide and tantrum; of flirtations among fresh- and saltwaters, forests and shores; of tense negotiations with an ocean that gives much but demands more. Every year the raw rim that is this coast gets hammered and reshaped like molten bronze. This place roils with power and a sometimes terrible beauty. The coast remains youthful, daring, uncertain about tomorrow. The guessing, the risk; in a way, we're all thrill seekers here.

  Carl Safina

  Ocean, Reality, Years

  20 Copy quote

• Whether on'e special emphasis is global warming or child welfare, the cause is the same cause. And justice comes from the same place being human comes from: compassion.

  Carl Safina

  Children, Compassion, Justice

  16 Copy quote

• [About reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, age 14, in the back seat of his parents' sedan. I almost threw up. I got physically ill when I learned that ospreys and peregrine falcons weren't raising chicks because of what people were spraying on bugs at their farms and lawns. This was the first time I learned that humans could impact the environment with chemicals. [That a corporation would create a product that didn't operate as advertised] was shocking in a way we weren't inured to.

  Carl Safina

  Spring, Reading, Science

  16 Copy quote

• For each of us, then, the challenge and opportunity is to cherish all life as the gift it is, envision it whole, seek to know it truly, and undertake-with our minds, hearts and hands-to restore its abundance. It is said that where there's life there's hope, and so no place can inspire us with more hopefulness than that great, life-making sea-that singular, wondrous ocean covering the blue planet.

  Carl Safina

  Ocean, Heart, Opportunity

  Carl Safina (2010). “Song for the Blue Ocean: Encounters Along the World's Coasts and Beneath the Seas”, p.440, Macmillan

  14 Copy quote

• A painting is nothing more than light reflected from the surface of a pigment-covered canvas. But a great painter can make you see the depth, make you feel the underlying emotion, make you sense the larger world. That, too, is the power of science: to sense and convey the depth and dimensionality of nature, to glance at the surface and to divine the shape of the universe around us.

  Carl Safina

  Light, Curiosity, Depth

  11 Copy quote

• The ocean is not just blank blue space but rather the habitat for amazing wildlife, and we have to take care how we use it. If we want to keep having the goods and services it provides, we have to treat it more carefully in terms of fishing and dumping.

  Carl Safina

  Ocean, Science, Blue

  9 Copy quote

• Any honest inquiry into the reality of nature also yields insights about ourselves.

  Carl Safina

  Reality, Yield, Inquiry

  Carl Safina (2010). “Song for the Blue Ocean: Encounters Along the World's Coasts and Beneath the Seas”, p.440, Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

• But one doesn't wait for a revolution. One becomes it.

  Carl Safina

  Waiting, Revolution

  Carl Safina (2011). “The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World”, p.52, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• Maybe we’ll live to see sharks recover. Right now, that seems as improbable as seeing all these falcons. Hope is the ability to see how things could be better. The world of human affairs has long been a shadowy place, but always backlit by the light of hope. Each person can add hope to the world. A resigned person subtracts hope. The more people strive, the more change becomes likely.

  Carl Safina

  Light, Sharks, Long

  Carl Safina (2011). “The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World”, p.304, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• The creatures of the sea hold special mystery, and they are among the most exciting, graceful, and beautiful on Earth. Just consider the living riot of a coral reef, the beauty of an albatross, the awesome power of a giant turtle, the grace of a dolphin. Now multiply that by the millions of creatures in the sea. Wow!

  Carl Safina

  Beautiful, Turtles, Sea

  23 Copy quote

• If you look right, you can see the whole world from wherever you happen to be.

  Carl Safina

  Science, Looks, World

  4 Copy quote

• If you ask the fish whether they'd rather have an oil spill or a season of fishing, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd vote for another blowout.

  Carl Safina

  Science, Fishing, Oil

  56 Copy quote

• Fishing provides time to think, and reason not to. If you have the virtue of patience, an hour or two of casting alone is plenty of time to review all you’ve learned about the grand themes of life.

  Carl Safina

  Thinking, Fishing, Two

  Carl Safina (2011). “The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World”, p.130, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• If you're overfishing at the top of the food chain, and acidifying the ocean at the bottom, you're creating a squeeze that could conceivably collapse the whole system.

  Carl Safina

  Ocean, Science, Creating

  92 Copy quote

• To save the seas, we can eat sustainably and be conscious of the seafood we eat.

  Carl Safina

  Sea, Conscious, Seafood

  31 Copy quote

• Economists don't seem to have noticed that the economy sits entirely within the ecology.

  Carl Safina

  Economy, Ecology, Economist

  Carl Safina (2011). “The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World”, p.126, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• Try to cut down drastically on plastic. Recycle. Use less energy and more renewable energy. We can all live better by doing better for ourselves and the sea!

  Carl Safina

  Cutting, Sea, Trying

  4 Copy quote

• Many people believe the whole catastrophe is the oil we spill, but that gets diluted and eventually disarmed over time. In fact, the oil we don't spill, the oil we collect, refine and use, produces CO2 and other gases that don't get diluted.

  Carl Safina

  Believe, Science, Oil

  4 Copy quote

• We are blessed with a magnificent and miraculous world ocean on this planet. But we are also stressing it in ways that we are not even close to bringing under control.

  Carl Safina

  Stress, Ocean, Blessed

  7 Copy quote

• Several groups have information evaluating seafood sustainability. I wrote the first such guide, and seafood pocket-guides and detailed evaluations of different seafoods are available for download from the group I founded, Blue Ocean Institute.

  Carl Safina

  Ocean, Blue, Pockets

  4 Copy quote

• For proponents of ecosystem-based management,the good news is that another new book, Ecosystem-based Management for the Oceans, conveys the topic at its state-of-the-art level of development...both Marine Ecosystems and Global Change and Ecosystem-based Management for the Oceans are valuable troves that could profitably be mined, and any academic bookshelf would wear them well.

  Carl Safina

  Art, Ocean, Book

  4 Copy quote

• Windy or not, a day this beautiful has to be lived. The day is bright and clear, the sky blue, and the dry air feels light. A northerly wind stirs a primal urge to move. The geese feel it, and so do I. Perhaps it is a last internal vestige from a time, long ago, when we migrated with the seasons across open plains, following the animals we pursued for food. Perhaps that is why the sight of migrating geese arrests our attention, why we feel the pull. We want to go, to travel in fresh or moody weather, taking in each newly revealed vista.

  Carl Safina

  Beautiful, Moving, Animal

  10 Copy quote

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